OFX Import problems

[David Reiser]

On Jun 29, 2011, at 12:52 PM, David Carlson wrote:

> I am trying to import transactions into a data file.  I am using Gnucash
> 2.4.6.  One issue is that one transaction of four dated June 1, 2011 is
> missing from the register.  The transaction is definitely in the OFX
> file, and the scheme that this bank uses for FITID's appears to be
> generating unique numbers.  When I repeat the import, the missing
> transaction still does not appear. Neither do any of the others, of
> course.  If I create a new test data file, I can make the missing
> transaction appear in an import to that file.
> 
> I suppose that I can manually create this missing transaction, but what
> if several transactions failed to appear?  Is it possible that I
> accidentally deleted this transaction or edited it into a different
> account?  If I had, wouldn't it import in a second try?  In this case, I
> cannot find it in the transfer account either.
> 
> My second problem is that the OFX importer is sometimes matching an
> imported transaction to the wrong pre-existing transaction and not
> allowing me to un-match it or match it to the correct transaction during
> the import.  It used to let me do that, but not lately.
> 
> David

I believe you've hit a hole in the transaction matcher logic. I'm fairly certain it only shows up if you have a mixture of entered vs. new transactions in the incoming ofx data stream. For example:
On Wednesday, I take some money out of an account at an ATM.
On Friday, my wife takes the same amount out of the same account from another ATM.
I'm likely to enter my withdrawal in gnucash within a couple days before I get around to downloading ofx transactions. I'm not likely to enter my wife's withdrawal manually because she's not too concerned about my recording such information in a timely fashion.
On the following Tuesday, I download an ofx file with the transactions in it.
What the transaction matcher shows is that both withdrawals have a potential match with an existing transaction. What it doesn't tell you is that both those transactions are a potential match for the same existing transaction already in gnucash. If you check the 'R' for both transactions, what gnucash does is accept one of the transactions as a match for the already entered transaction and throws the other away. (I don't know if it matches the first, and then tosses the second because it already has a match; or if it accepts both one at a time resulting in the first 'match' being discarded when it also matches the second incoming potential match.)
The transactions don't have to be on the same day -- just within the transaction date-matching window (14 days, I think). They also don't have to be exactly the same amount -- just within whatever the matching delta is.

Dave
--
David Reiser
dbreiser at earthlink.net